OAPs have been left on the floor for seven or eight hours waiting for an ambulance because the service is so stretched, it has been revealed.

More than 10 per cent of the county’s ambulances are taken out of action every day because of delays during the handing over of patients to hospitals - with the equivalent of four ambulances being stuck on the depot forecourt every day.

The revelation came as staff from the East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) appeared at Cambridgeshire County Council’s health committee to discuss a CQC (Care Quality Commission) report into the ambulance service’s performance.

The service was commended for many aspects of its work, but staff told councillors they were under pressure from inefficient hand-over times and ever-increasing demand.

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Luke Squibb, of EEAST, said: “Over the last five weeks, the ambulance service in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough has lost the equivalent of roughly four out of 31 ambulances a day. They are not attending patients because they are sat in queues at hospitals. That is over 10 per cent being lost to delays.”

To counteract this, effort is being made to release crews earlier so they can get back out to attend patients more quickly.

This comes at a time when EEAST is experiencing particularly high demand for its services.

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“We have had a trust-wide increase in demand,” said Mr Squibb. “We had 1,000 extra calls on New Year’s Day over last year.

“A couple of weeks ago, we had a ‘no-send policy’ on some of the less serious calls that we had. Unfortunately, that was a lot of elderly people who had suffered falls. There have been some instances where a patient was waiting seven or eight hours on the floor for an ambulance.”

East of England Ambulance Service

Mr Squibb said the calls are monitored to make sure the patients’ condition did not change or deteriorate. If they did, he said, they would be given a higher priority.

The ambulance service staff were thanked by councillors for their hard work.